1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multilayer ceramic electronic component and, more particularly, a multilayer ceramic electronic component having high reliability.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, an electronic component fabricated using a ceramic material, such as a capacitor, an inductor, a piezoelectric device, a varistor, a thermistor, or the like, generally has a ceramic body made of a ceramic material, internal electrodes provided in the ceramic body, and external electrodes (that is, termination electrodes) placed on surfaces of the ceramic body so as to be connected to respective internal electrodes.
Among ceramic electronic components, a multilayer ceramic capacitor typically includes a plurality of sequentially laminated dielectric layers, internal electrodes arranged to face each other while having each dielectric layer disposed therebetween, and termination electrodes electrically connected to respective internal electrodes.
Such a multilayer ceramic capacitor has beneficial features such as small size but high capacity, ease of mounting, and the like, and is therefore widely used as a component of mobile communications equipment such as computers, PDAs, mobile phones, and so forth.
In recent years, with the trend towards smaller sized multi-functional electronic products, electronic parts have have tended to have a smaller size and high performance. In response, high capacity multilayer ceramic capacitors having a large capacity while having a small size are required. In order to increase the capacity of a multilayer ceramic capacitor, the number of lamination layers thereof should be increased while a thickness of each of the dielectric layer and the internal electrode layers is decreased. However, if the dielectric layer and the internal electrode are thinned and the number of lamination layers is increased, the possibility of dielectric breakdown may be increased and delamination and cracking may occur, thus causing a degradation in reliability of the multilayer ceramic capacitor. Accordingly, there remain limitations in the development of a high capacity multilayer ceramic capacitor and the miniaturization thereof.